Stop RFID-DMIS School

Subject: Concern over the use of Bluetooth ID cards in Doha Modern Indian School

Dear Sir,Our children are students of “Doha Modern Indian School”. We request your kind attention to an urgentmatter.Doha Modern Indian School has made it mandatory for all its students to use Bluetooth based RFID inthe academic year 2017-2018. However we have below concerns regarding the use of this ID by ourchildren. The school has not provided a valid assurance regarding the safety of these identity cards to theparents. The Certificate provided to the parents by the school in this regard is issued by themanufacturer of the ID card which is not assuring enough; as the school has not provided us anycertificate assuring safety of these ID cards from the concerned authorities under QatariGovernment (ICT Qatar or Ministry of Health). We are concerned that use of radio frequency IDcards for prolonged duration on a daily basis would expose our children (aged 3.5 to 17 years) tohealth risks. Pls refer to enclosed article regarding health risk associated with RFID. As per the school, the ID cards are being introduced to enforce the safety and discipline ofstudents by real time location monitoring of students. However we do not believe in enforcingdiscipline by inducing fear into the child of being tracked all the time. Rather discipline should benourished within the child in a constructive way. School may use alternate safer and reasonablemeasures to improve the safety. The school says the system will help monitor toilet frequency ofstudents, which is a human right violation. The school is charging a very high price of QAR.1200 per student each year for the ID card. Thisis a huge burden on parents, particularly for those parents who have more than one child studying in the school. Introduction of RFID will not add any value to improve academicstandard of school. The school has made it mandatory for parents to accept RFID to reregister their wards for theacademic year 2017-2018. As per the declaration required by the school to be signed by allparents, we are required to agree that our child may be stopped from attending classes orboarding the school bus if they fail to carry the ID card to school (refer to No.5 of the encloseddeclaration form issued by the school). The school did not consult parents before enforcing the ID card and neither did they address theconcerns of many parents communicated to the school via emails and personally regarding thismatter.This letter is written by concerned parents who have undersigned. We sincerely request your urgentattention in this matter as our children will not be permitted to continue in the 2017-2018 academicyear unless we agree and sign our consent for the school to use Bluetooth based RFID on our children onor before 25th Feb 2017.

We request the earliest intervention of Ministry of Education and advice Doha Modern Indian Schoolto suspend the implementation of RFID till above mentioned concerns are resolved by the school. Werequest the Ministry to permit the parents to reregister their wards in Doha Modern Indian School foracademic year 2017-2018 without signing the acceptance of RFID as required in the reregistrationform by the school.